Chapter 7

SEVEN

It was astoundingto Casper how easy it was to get attached to Sawyer. That’s what it was. He was getting attached. He refused to be cutesy or na?ve by letting himself think he was falling in love, but for a little over a week, since the outing into Whitby, he’d gone to bed thinking about Sawyer, the conversations they’d had, and the inside jokes that were developing between the two of them, and he’d waken up in the morning, looking forward to seeing Sawyer at breakfast and throughout the shooting day.

Shooting days were long and grueling, since Harry had only offered his estate for so long and the production had ten episodes to film. Most of the meat of the series would be filmed in a studio in London, but all of the exteriors, and a few key scenes, like the ballroom scene everyone was gearing up for that particular morning, would be filmed at Wodehouse Abbey. The intensity of the schedule meant that Casper could do little more than smile at Sawyer across the room or spend a few minutes here and there sitting with him between takes.

That was more or less what he was doing early in the morning, as the ballroom scene was set up and the seemingly constant stream of extras who had been hired for the day wandered in and out of wardrobe and make-up. Casper caught sight of Sawyer at the far end of the ballroom, where the lead cast was having a quick meeting with Rory and the dance instructor while a few well-placed PAs kept some of the nosier extras from getting too close to the stars.

Sawyer glanced up from the meeting, spotted Casper near the doorway, and smiled in a way that Casper felt down to his toes. Casper smiled and raised the hand that held his mobile phone in a sort of wave. His body reacted to Sawyer with interest every time, but not so much that he couldn’t ignore it and move on.

He was forced to move on when one of the extras who had been gazing around the ballroom in awe took it upon themselves to try to lift an antique vase off its plinth nearby.

“Excuse me,” Casper called out, stepping closer to the middle-aged woman, who was dressed and coifed as if she were one of the chaperones at the dance. “Please don’t touch that.”

For a moment, Casper thought the woman hadn’t heard him. She pulled one hand back, but stroked the side of the vase with her other.

“I said please don’t touch that,” Casper said, more exasperation in his voice.

The woman turned a sharp look to him, as if he were the one doing something wrong. “Don’t speak to me like that,” she said. “Who do you think you are anyhow?”

Casper couldn’t believe the woman’s audacity. “I’m the historical consultant for the show and a personal friend of the Duke of Malton,” he said.

“Ooh. La-dee-da!” the woman said, then walked away, face flushed red, without a backward glance for Casper.

Casper was left shaking his head at her audacity. Underneath that, however, her treatment of him stung a little. It wasn’t the first time someone had dismissed him as unimportant and walked away like that. Definitely not the first. And probably not the last.

It might have been that slight that knocked his mood sideways. He glanced across the increasingly crowded ballroom to Sawyer again, but this time, Sawyer didn’t see him, as he was busy getting a few tips about dancing from the instructor.

Casper let out a sigh and dropped his shoulders. He glanced around the room, searching for any historical detail that needed enhancing or anything from the modern world that needed correcting, but he and the rest of the production team had already done their jobs in that regard. The extras all looked like perfect, Regency-era party guests without a hair or glove out of place. Most of them were standing in groups, laughing and chatting away, their posture and mannerisms decidedly twenty-first century, but since the cameras weren’t rolling, that didn’t matter.

They were all standing in groups, like people who knew how to socialize and get along with others. It was silly of him, but Casper started to imagine that a giant bubble surrounded him, blocking him from the notice of anyone else in the room. He was invisible inside that bubble, without a single smile or glance in his direction. And yet, it was as if his feet were glued to the floor and he couldn’t join any of the groups to introduce himself. What would he say anyhow? “Hello, I’m a thirty-three-year-old man with a stuffy, academic job who has all the social acumen of a primary school outcast?”

He was saved from his own awkward disappointment in himself by his phone buzzing in his back pocket. A flush of awkwardness shot through him as he scrambled for it to check the text message someone had just sent him. Phones had been forbidden for the cast and extras in the ballroom, but a few of the crew still had theirs. That didn’t make Casper feel any less like he was misbehaving, though.

The text he’d been sent made him feel even worse. “Bollocks,” he grumbled as he saw the quick message from Avril, letting him know that another of the publishers they were shopping his history of The Brotherhood to had rejected it.

He stared at the text for longer than he needed to, hoping the words would change to reveal that, in fact, his book had been accepted with a fat advance and that the publisher was determined to make it a bestseller. He sighed again when that didn’t happen, then closed the message and tucked the phone back into his pocket. Rejected again, alone, isolated, awkward, no idea how to?—

Casper’s gloomy thoughts were cut short when he glanced across the ballroom again to find Sawyer striding toward him, an excited grin on his face. The extras and various crew parted for him automatically, watching him with interest as he passed.

But of course they did. Sawyer looked positively gorgeous in his outlandish, Percy-attending-a-grand-ball costume. The cut of his jacket showed off Sawyer’s lean form, and the way his silk breeches hugged his thighs made Casper want to run his hands all over them, appropriate or not.

“I’ve got exciting news for you,” Sawyer said as soon as he reached Casper, his gaze never wavering or catching on something else more worthy of his attention.

“Really?” Casper asked, a little breathless.

Attached, he reminded himself. Not in love. They were just friends. The fact that his heart beat faster every time Sawyer was near was inconsequential.

“Yes,” Sawyer said, eyes glittering, smile perfect. “I happened to mention to Lawrence and Alicia, the dance captains, that you knew all of these Regency country dances.”

“You did?” Casper blinked, feeling far too pleased that Sawyer would talk about him when he wasn’t part of the conversation.

“I did,” Sawyer said, cupping a hand under Casper’s elbow and walking him towards the ballroom door. “And they instantly decided that they want you in costume, as a dancing extra for this scene.”

“No!” Casper gasped, then laughed.

“Yes!” Sawyer said, matching his tone and intensity. “I finally get to see you in Regency dress!”

Casper’s entire body went warm at that statement. He had to rein himself in, control his reactions, and remind himself that Sawyer might not be into that sort of thing, but the very idea that his new friend was interested in looking at his body in a certain way stole Casper’s breath.

“Are you sure it’s alright?” he asked as Sawyer marched him down the hall to wardrobe. “Don’t I have to sign some sort of contract, be a member of some actors’ guild or something?”

Sawyer pinched his face and made a considering sound. “You’re already part of the production, so Rory said he’d sort it with the producers later. Some of these extras are rubbish with the dances, and they want someone handsome they can hone a camera in on who is doing things right.”

Casper felt momentarily sick at the thought of a camera on him. “What if I stuff it all up?” he asked as they turned the corner to the busy wardrobe room.

“You won’t,” Sawyer reassured him.

For a moment, he leaned closer to Casper, like he might kiss his cheek in encouragement. Casper braced himself for the moment, tingling from the inside out, but they were dragged into the chaos of the costume room before anything could happen.

“Rory wants Casper here in costume for this scene,” Sawyer called out over the noise of activity to Vanessa, the head costumer. “He’s needed on set as quickly as possible.”

“Right you are,” Vanessa called back right away, as if she’d already been paying attention to Sawyer from before he entered the room.

The strange thing was, Casper wasn’t at all jealous of Sawyer’s visibility and command of people’s attention, even though his own invisibility upset him more often than not. Casper was impressed with Sawyer in so many ways, and if standing close to Sawyer’s light helped others to see him, then maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

Sawyer had to return to the set immediately while Vanessa drew Casper over to racks of stock Regency costumes and asked about his measurements. Fortunately, Casper was relatively easy to fit. He got caught up in the excitement of actually playing a part in the show, and felt right at home slipping on a pair of hose and tight breeches, along with all the trappings a Regency gentleman would wear.

Make-up was quick but also fun. He’d never been interested in wearing it, but as soon as he saw the transformation of his face from something mundane and ordinary to what even he would admit was beautiful, he understood why so many men wore make-up of some sort these days.

By the time he returned to the ballroom, sans phone, completely immersed in all the feelings of a Regency gentleman, he was eager to find Sawyer again and show off. He wasn’t disappointed either.

“You look absolutely amazing,” Sawyer said, breaking away from the group he’d been practicing the dance with to welcome Casper back and rake his eyes over him.

Casper had never felt so seen or appreciated. “I feel like I could step through the wrong doorway and end up traveling back in time to the actual Regency,” he said with a laugh.

“Well, you’d blend right in,” Sawyer said.

He brushed a hand over the front of Casper’s jacket, pretending to straighten his lapels. Even with Sawyer’s stage make-up, Casper caught his blush as his fingers swept over his neck. His touch left tingles in its wake, and when the two of them glanced up at the same time, Casper couldn’t breathe for a moment.

It wasn’t supposed to be like that, was it? They weren’t actually part of the Regency, or any other era where a glance across a crowded ballroom or a secret brush of fingers was considered sexy. They lived in a time when people met at pubs and asked, “Wanna fuck?”, when kids learned about safe sex before they left primary school and peer pressure pushed impossibly young people to experiment early and often.

But there he was, feeling more excited by the idea that maybe, just maybe, he’d get to dance with Sawyer and touch him again than anything hot and heavy had ever made him feel.

“Sawyer!” Rory bellowed somewhere behind him. “We need to get started! Get your arse over here!”

Sawyer winced, very much in character as Percy, and sent Casper a look before dashing back to his dancing group.

Casper drew in a deep breath, filling his lungs with air and happiness.

That feeling of elation carried him through what turned out to be the brutal filming process. First, the dance captains paired them all up based on ability and ran through the steps of the dances they would be filming. Casper was grateful that they were sticking to authentic dance forms, and that he knew all of them. He knew them so well that he ended up placed near the cameras, partnered with one of the more experienced extras, Lottie, who rattled off a list of other productions she’d danced in almost as soon as they were paired.

That was the most exciting part of the day, though. From that point, filming involved a lot of standing around, stopping and starting at least a dozen times, grainy playback of the song that would be added in post-production blasted over hidden loudspeakers over and over until Casper swore he’d be hearing the song in his sleep, and Rory shouting direction to everyone over the same loudspeakers to keep absolute order.

“I had no idea filming was so tedious,” Casper told Sawyer over lunch, as they sat in chairs out on the lawn, trying to eat finger sandwiches without smudging their make-up too much.

Sawyer laughed and nudged his elbow into Casper’s arm. “You’ve been sitting by, watching shooting for weeks now. How can you have no idea what it entails?”

“I’ve been busy while watching,” Casper defended himself easily, leaning closer to Sawyer. “I’ve been working while you all have been shooting.”

Sawyer hummed and wiggled his eyebrows mischievously. “Is that what you’ve been doing with that laptop of yours? I thought you were playing the home version of Space Invaders.”

Casper laughed aloud, feeling as though the sunshine of the afternoon were seeping into his soul. “No, I’ve been working on another book, actually,” he said, sending Sawyer an enticing look.

“Really?” Sawyer looked delighted. “What’s this one about?”

“It’s the history of the After the War house party,” he said. “The real history. I’ve read through all of Anthony Wodehouse’s diaries and the letters and diaries of everyone else who was at the party, and I’ve been formulating it into a book.”

“That’s brilliant.” Sawyer reached with his free hand to touch Casper’s leg. “You have to get it done and submit it to someone via the production. I bet they’d be overjoyed to have someone release a book about the true history of what we’re filming here.”

“Maybe,” Casper said, smiling back at Sawyer. “You know I don’t want to use the show to get ahead, though.”

“Bollocks to that,” Sawyer said. “Use whatever you can to get this story into the world.”

Sawyer’s enthusiasm was contagious. For a moment, Casper just smiled at him, so grateful the two of them were…attached. Maybe it wouldn’t be cheating if he used the show to get published, to be seen, after all.

As soon as lunch was over and they were called back to the ballroom, the entire, slow filming process started up again. There were a few changes as the afternoon wore on, though.

“Are you and Sawyer Kingston an item?” Lottie asked as they moved through one of the dances that brought partners closer then broke them apart again.

Casper flushed hot, but had to wait until the steps brought him back to Lottie again. “No,” he said, a little too breathless. “What makes you think that?”

They split apart for a moment, turned a circle, then found themselves face to face, hands touching between them, as they turned a circle with each other.

“You seemed awfully chummy at lunch,” Lottie said. “And he got you this part, didn’t he?”

“I’m the historical consultant for the production,” Casper said stiffly.

That seemed to be enough of an answer for Lottie. But a few minutes later, when the forms of the dance had him standing next to another of the male extras while they waited for something having to do with the main cast, it came up again.

“So you’re Sawyer Kingston’s boyfriend, are you?” the male extra asked.

Casper grew even hotter. “I’m not,” he said.

The extra shrugged. “I always assumed he was gay, even though he’s never said anything in the press. Good for you.”

The dancing started up again before Casper had a chance to set the extra straight.

Thirty minutes later, once they’d finished filming the actual dancing and moved on to dialog between the main cast while the extras stood around, pretending to chat, Regency-style, the subject came up again.

“I hear you’re dating Sawyer Kingston,” one of the older women Casper had been put into a group with said as they stood stiff and straight, pretending not to notice the drama that was taking place at the other end of the room, where the cameras were pointing.

“I’m not, actually,” Casper said, starting to genuinely worry about how fast rumors could spread. It was like they were at an actual Regency ball and the sharp tongues of the ton were wagging. “We’re just friends.”

“Just friends,” the elderly man with the older woman snorted. “That’s what we all were back in my day.”

The other male extra with them, who looked to be in his sixties, laughed with him. “I suppose they’re just roommates, too,” he said. “That’s what I had to tell casting directors my partner was.”

“Oh, yes,” the elderly man said. “We couldn’t so much as whisper the truth to anyone, especially once AIDS hit, or we’d be blackballed.”

“You lot these days don’t know how lucky you are,” the man in his sixties chuckled at Casper.

“We’re not together,” Casper tried to correct him. It seemed like an impossible task, though. People seemed to have already made up their minds.

He tried not to let it bother him, but as the afternoon wore on to the close of the day and the end of filming, Casper heard himself referred to as Sawyer’s boyfriend at least a dozen more times.

“I tried to set people straight,” he told Sawyer once they’d wrapped for the day, as everyone made a mad dash out of the ballroom. “I just want you to know I didn’t have anything to do with it if rumors persist.”

Sawyer laughed, but Casper could tell he was genuinely anxious. “If I had a dime for every celebrity rumor that made a splash then fizzled out, I’d be rich.”

“Alright,” Casper sighed warily. “But I know how concerned you are about…things.”

It didn’t help at all that he leaned closer to Sawyer so he could lower his voice while he said that. Some of the extras they walked past gave them knowing looks.

It also didn’t help when Sawyer tugged him past the large dressing room for extras and on to his own, private dressing room beyond that.

“I had one of the PAs move your things in here,” he explained once they’d reached the room and Casper saw his clothes piled on a chair. “It’s chaos out there.”

“Sawyer,” Casper scolded him, crossing to fetch his things. “People are already talking.”

Sawyer looked chastised as he shrugged out of his jacket and hung it on the rack to one side of his room. “I made the request before I knew the two of us would be the epicenter of gossip during filming.”

Casper sighed, his stomach feeling heavy, as he pulled his phone out of the back pocket of his jeans. As much fun as he’d had that day, he had the creeping suspicion that, in the end, he’d caused problems for Sawyer. Which was the last thing he wanted to do. Sawyer was his…friend. He only wanted good things and peace for him.

“It was just one day of filming,” Sawyer said. “I’m sure just as many of the extras were caught up in the way Phillip was acting like an arse for most of the afternoon as were shipping us.”

Casper grinned at the use of the term “shipping” as he tapped through his phone to check his messages and emails. He had an entire mountain of them to go through, since he’d ignored his phone almost all day.

“Whatever people were talking about today, it’ll die down tomorrow when the next big thing comes along,” Sawyer said as he stepped behind a small screen to undress.

Casper found it endearing that Sawyer was modest enough undress behind the screen. And he figured Sawyer knew better about how gossip worked than he did.

The one thing neither of them had addressed, or even whispered about, was whether the rumors were true. Casper had denied he was dating Sawyer to everyone who’d asked, but in his gut, he felt like he and Sawyer needed to sit down and actually talk about that. They needed to talk about what dating meant to each of them and whether the friendship they’d struck up qualified. They needed to honestly talk about what they each wanted, too.

Because there was something there, Casper knew it. He felt too easy, too happy and comfortable, with Sawyer for there to be nothing between them.

His thoughts were snapped back to what was in front of him instead of drifting off into la-la-land when he came across an email from the Royal University of London on his phone. The email’s title was simply “Interview”, but that word alone was enough to have Casper catching his breath. He opened the email and read through it, his heart beating faster.

“It was fun today, wasn’t it?” Sawyer said, coming out from behind the screen dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. “I kept watching you, and you looked like you were having the time of your life with the—what is it?”

Casper glanced up from his email with a broad smile. He’d only barely noted the mention that Sawyer had been watching him all day. A whole other box of possibility had just opened up for him.

“I have an interview,” he said, beaming. “I have an interview next week for the Professor of History position at Royal University of London.”